David, my next-door neighbour, has two young children ages five and seven. One day he was teaching his seven-year-old son Kelly how to push the gas-powered lawn mower around the yard. As he was teaching him how to turn the mower around at the end of the lawn, his wife, Jan, called to him to ask a question. As David turned to answer the question, Kelly pushed the lawn mower right through the flowerbed at the edge of the lawn — leaving a two-foot wide path levelled to the ground!

When David turned back around and saw what had happened, he began to lose control. David had put a lot of time and effort into making those flower beds the envy of the neighbourhood. As he began to raise his voice to his son, Jan walked quickly over to him, put her hand on his shoulder and said, “David, please remember, we’re raising children, not flowers!”

Jan reminded me how important it is as a parent to remember our priorities. Children and their self-esteem are more important than physical objects they might break. The windowpane sh-attered by a baseball, a lamp knocked over by a careless child, or a plate dropped in the kitchen is already broken. The flowers are already dead. I must remember not to add to the destruction by breaking a child’s spirit and deadening his sense of liveliness. — Jack Canfield